She, too, in unconscious frankness, without thought or design, was led on, by new and fresh association, to open all the treasures of her mind to her new friend, not knowing how they might dazzle; and her brother and her father both aided, unthinkingly, in the same course.
When Brooks had left them, half an hour was spent in one of those pleasant after-breakfast dreams, when the mind seems to take a moment's hesitating pause before grappling with the active business of the day. But little was said; each gazed forth from window or from door--each thought, perhaps, of the other, and each drank in sweet sensation from the scene before the eyes.
Each thought of the other, I have said; and when such is the case, how infinite are the varieties into which thought moulds itself!
Walter paused and pondered upon the stranger's state and objects; asked himself who he was; what could be his errand; how, why, he came thither. Major Kielmansegge he knew him not to be. A chance word had shown him not only his rank and station, but had shown also that there was a secret to be kept--a secret to which his imagination, perhaps, lent more importance than it deserved. He was an English peer, the young man knew, one of a rank with which, in former years, he had been accustomed to mingle, and for which, notwithstanding all that had passed, and lapse of time, and varied circumstances, he retained an habitual veneration. But what could have led a British peer to that secluded spot? what could be the circumstances which, having led him thither, had suddenly changed his purpose of proceeding onward, and induced him to remain a guest in his father's cottage, in a state of half-concealment? Could it be Lord Loudun, he asked himself, the commander-in-chief of the royal forces, whose conduct had been so severely censured in his own ears by the man just gone?
Youth always leaves a thousand things out of calculation, and darts at its conclusions with rapidity that overleaps the real end; and thus, what with the military bearing, the secrecy, a certain degree of reserve of manner, and an air of command, he argued himself into the belief that their guest was certainly the general of whom they had heard so much and knew so little; without at all considering how unlikely it was, that so important a command should be intrusted to one so young. It did not, indeed, raise the stranger in his esteem, or in his regard, to believe him to be Lord Loudun; for this nobleman had not won the goodwill of the people of the province, nor secured their approbation. They had perhaps expected too much from his coming, and had been bitterly disappointed by the result.
Edith thought of his rank and station not at all. Some of his words lingered in her ear, and afforded matter for the mind to work with. They were not such as she had heard for long. They were different even, in some respects, from any that she remembered. There was nothing light in them, nothing frivolous; but, combined with the tone and manner, they gave the impression that they sprang from a mind deep, powerful, self-relying, cultivated and enriched by study and observation, and full of activity and eagerness. She might inquire what sort of heart was united with that mind; she might be doubtful of it; for she had not much experience, and she knew not how often men, in mere sport, or to elicit the shy secrets of woman's heart, or for idle vanity or light caprice, utter that which they do not feel, affect a character they do not possess, and often inferior to their own.
She did not make up her mind hastily, however. Indeed she had not yet sufficient interest in the object of her thoughts to care much about making up her mind at all. She thought him a very handsome and a very agreeable man, sufficiently odd, or different from the common run, to excite some interest, yet with an oddity in no degree offensive; but that was all. She knew that he had only come for a day, and that, though some accidental meeting with Sir William Johnson had induced him to protract his stay, it would probably only be for a day or two longer. Then he would go: his shadow would pass away from the floor, and his memory from her mind--she thought.
Accident! Who is there that believes in accident? On my life, it requires more faith to conceive such a thing as accident than to believe in the divinity of Juggernaut. The only reason why any man can imagine such a thing, is because he sees not the causes which bring to pass the event which he calls an accident; and yet he perceives the hands of a clock move round the dial, without beholding the springs and wheels, and never dreams it is by accident that the bell chimes noon. Let any man look through the strange concatenation of event with event, through the course of his own life, and dream of accident, if he can.
It was not by accident that Lord H---- and Edith
Prevost met there. It was for the working out of their mutual destiny, under the will of God; for, if there be a God, there is a special Providence.